Humanity
by Brochelle
Summary: The Master Chief was practical, and Palmer realized that he would hide behind that armor of practicality to avoid what every soldier had trained out of them. Post Halo 4, spoilers obviously.


The boys started to whisper, one leaning toward the other and uttering words that went unheard in the noisy technical room. Sarah Palmer followed their eyes and broke into a smile.

Striding through the door opposite them was the Master Chief.

He was still an impressive sight to see: he stood at around seven feet tall, was encased in olive-colored, bulky, battle-scarred MJOLNIR armor, and had the near-tangible power of a living statue. He moved with the solidity and strength of a tank; so complete was the image that Palmer was sure that if anyone got in his way, he would be quite capable of moving right through them.

This moment was no different than when she first met him. Everyone seemed to stop what they were doing, and held their collective breath as a living legend walked amongst them. Conversations were halted by the sight, before jump-starting into distracted, forced dialogue.

As he began to walk toward them, Sarah felt her smile drop.

There was something wrong.

He kept his gaze straight ahead, locked on an invisible destination. Everything about his body language dictated the weight of the world upon his shoulders, from the way his arms swung limply at his sides to the slow, purposeful stride he took. He lacked the stony confidence that he had held with such ancient graces when they had first met. He approached her, and she noticed that his armor's chest plate was gouged and burned on one side; horrific scarring she hadn't seen the last time.

He passed her, and the helmet turned toward her, fixing her with a steely, amber stare. The glass caught the light, and she realized it was nicked and scratched obscenely, as if some beast had tried to claw away his face.

Sarah stared into the visor and willed it to tell her what had happened.

The Master Chief, SPARTAN-117, looked away, and continued his steady walk toward the armor stations.

Palmer watched him go, still silently commanding for the resigned soldier to return and explain himself. He was acting as though they hadn't just defeated a seemingly unconquerable enemy - as if millions of lives hadn't just been saved. He'd gone and made himself another legend, and here he was, acting like his victory against the Didact was a failure.

"What's up with him?" she muttered bitterly.

A technician, following the Chief's path, stopped at her words. His eyes were sunken from the spare few hours of sleep that the crew had been allowed between Requiem and Earth, and sweat dressed his brow and glistened there. He looked at her, wide-eyed. Swallowing nervously, he turned and watched the Chief.

"You didn't hear?" he said, openly shocked.

"Apparently not."

The technician shook his head and glanced down at his feet before looking at the Chief again. Gradually, he started walking away from Palmer, still glancing at her over his shoulder.

"It's his A.I., Cortana - I think. She went kaput, or something. I don't know for sure, but I gotta check his neural interface for trauma."

The technician gave her one last worried stare, then set off after the towering SPARTAN. Sarah watched him and found herself frowning deeply.

"Shit," muttered one of the men behind her.

The Master Chief's companion was nearly as legendary as the Spartan himself. It was common knowledge that the A.I. had been able to navigate Forerunner systems with the ease of using a search engine, and that she was fairly human-like in attitude and behavior; more than one marine had recalled the unnerving originality and authentic tone of voice in her jokes and her snark. Considering the differences in behavior between the Chief and Cortana, it was a curious wonder how they managed to get along as well as they did.

Staring without seeing, Sarah thought about the conflict between Del Rio and the Chief. Initially, the two had remained compliant with the other, though Del Rio's trademark tendency to force his authority on lower ranking officers seemed to put the SPARTAN off-kilter. The catalyst event for their power struggle occurred when Cortana lost composure and unleashed an energy pulse which temporarily disrupted the Infinity's bridge controls. Del Rio had attempted to bully the Chief into surrendering his companion - which the SPARTAN had countered with a bold dismissal of a direct order from a superior officer. SPARTANs were trained to follow UNSC law to the T; Chief's behavior had shocked all of them. She had passed it off as the Chief doing what he thought would defeat the Didact before it reached Earth.

Sarah recalled the stories of the Chief's suicide run into the Flood-controlled High Charity, where the initial mission goal had been to retrieve the Index from a shipboard A.I., and initiate the in-construction Halo ring above the Ark. The boys had voiced their insecurities about the validity of the mission - why couldn't they get another Index? Why couldn't they just nuke High Charity? For a long time, Sarah had been frustrated with how the facts didn't add up. How the Chief - a living legend, humanity's single symbol of hope - and risked everything to save a replaceable computer program.

She still didn't understand, especially not right now.

A hush fell over the room as they watched the Chief step up to the machine that would dismantle his armor.

As she looked over the masses gathering around the machine with the SPARTAN in it, she felt a sudden and core-deep need to force them all to leave. His armor was a symbol of iron will; to remove it would reveal weakness, and a human side to something that most people were perfectly fine assuming was actually a machine. To show his face would remind everyone present that the shield they had hidden behind was actually a person, not cannon fodder.

Sarah realized that that was where Cortana came in. Cortana - the machine, the lifeless program - had been his spirit; his humanity where he lacked it. The armor had been his own shield to hide behind. It was physical means of avoiding the humanity that would make war - and survival - that much more difficult. And now that Cortana was gone, what did he have left?

"The press are going to go crazy over this," someone nearby commented. "You think we'll see his face? They never showed it at the memorial."

"Shit if I know. Son of a bitch is probably about as scarred up as every other veteran of the Covie war."

The machine got to work, replacing the previous noise of the room with the groaning and whirring of hydraulics and hardware. The armor around his forearm was the first to go - dropping away from the black matte undersuit and into the grasp of a waiting technician. Next was the mutilated chest piece, which fell to the floor and landed solidly, without a single bounce. The slim mechanical arms shifted upward and unhooked the airtight latches around the helmet's base. Two techies stepped in, and, standing on tip-toe, lifted away the iconic helmet.


End file.
